I was a typical little girl with the dream of growing up to be a veterinarian, as I have always had a love of all animals, a desire to know more about them, and help them when I could. I was always bringing home injured or stray animals. My dreams came to a pause when I was a teenager and I decided to be in the room when my childhood dog needed to be euthanized. She cried out as the drugs hit her system and I wasn’t sure I had the emotional strength it takes to be a veterinarian. Injured birds were one thing, but my own dog was another. Fast forward to my late twenties, I had worked at various clinics as a vet assistant throughout the years and I loved my jobs, but they never really paid the bills. So I found myself working in a job with opportunities in management and I was quickly moving up the corporate ladder. I still day-dreamed about being a veterinarian from time to time, until life had different plans. I was driving home from work, when a cat darted into the road and was hit by an oncoming car. The driver stopped, saw they hit the cat and drove off. I scooped the cat off the road, still alive and drove it to the emergency hospital. The cat didn’t make it and I cried the entire night; not only for the loss of the cats’ life, but knowing that I didn’t have enough knowledge and skills to have even been able to alleviate its pain when I should have. After that, I knew I needed to change the course of my life. I quit my job, enrolled in college and have been working towards a career in veterinary medicine ever since. Since the time of the death of the cat whose name I will never know, I worked my way through undergraduate, graduate school and I am now completing my third year and am looking forward to starting my fourth year clinicals at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine. While I never forgot about the cat, I was reminded this past summer that emergencies can happen to even the best trained personnel. This time, it was my own dog. I woke up to my geriatric shepherd choking in the middle of the night, couldn’t feel or find anything in her throat or airway and ultimately took her into the after-hours emergency hospital. Upon physical exam, they couldn’t find anything either, but I knew there was more. Unfortunately for her, the ER was very busy and my dog was considered ‘stable’, so we never got seen. I took her into work later that morning, to get her the much needed radiographs to discover she was having an episode of GDV, a life threatening twisting of the stomach. I just couldn’t lose another pet so soon after I had lost my Pyrenees/Akbash mix a few months prior to osteosarcoma. Thankfully, she survived the emergency surgery. This has prompted me to seek out shadows and future post-graduation internships in the field of emergency medicine. Additionally, I am one lucky student to be taking the first Urgent Care class at my university this semester. As my DVM draws ever closer, I look forward to being able to know exactly what to do and how to handle an animal crisis, and saving the lives of as many furry family members as I can.

A Doctor of Veterinary Medicine is my career goal. While it sounds simple and direct, it hasn’t been a direct path. I was a typical little girl with the dream of growing up to be a veterinarian, as I have always had a love of all animals, a desire to know more about them, and help them when I could. I was always bringing home injured or stray animals. My dreams came to a pause when I was a teenager and I decided to be in the room when my childhood dog needed to be euthanized. She cried out as the drugs hit her system and I wasn’t sure I had the emotional strength it takes to be a veterinarian. Injured birds were one thing, but my own dog was another. Fast forward to my late twenties, I had worked at various clinics as a vet assistant throughout the years and I loved my jobs, but they never really paid the bills. So I found myself working in a job with opportunities in management and I was quickly moving up the corporate ladder. I still day-dreamed about being a veterinarian from time to time, until life had different plans. I was driving home from work, when a cat darted into the road and was hit by an oncoming car. The driver stopped, saw they hit the cat and drove off. I scooped the cat off the road, still alive and drove it to the emergency hospital. The cat didn’t make it and I cried the entire night; not only for the loss of the cats’ life, but knowing that I didn’t have enough knowledge and skills to have even been able to alleviate its pain when I should have. After that, I knew I needed to change the course of my life. I quit my job, enrolled in college and have been working towards a career in veterinary medicine ever since. Since the time of the death of the cat whose name I will never know, I worked my way through undergraduate, graduate school and I am now completing my third year and am looking forward to starting my fourth year clinicals at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine. While I never forgot about the cat, I was reminded this past summer that emergencies can happen to even the best trained personnel. This time, it was my own dog. I woke up to my geriatric shepherd choking in the middle of the night, couldn’t feel or find anything in her throat or airway and ultimately took her into the after-hours emergency hospital. Upon physical exam, they couldn’t find anything either, but I knew there was more. Unfortunately for her, the ER was very busy and my dog was considered ‘stable’, so we never got seen. I took her into work later that morning, to get her the much needed radiographs to discover she was having an episode of GDV, a life threatening twisting of the stomach. I just couldn’t lose another pet so soon after I had lost my Pyrenees/Akbash mix a few months prior to osteosarcoma. Thankfully, she survived the emergency surgery. This has prompted me to seek out shadows and future post-graduation internships in the field of emergency medicine. Additionally, I am one lucky student to be taking the first Urgent Care class at my university this semester. As my DVM draws ever closer, I look forward to being able to know exactly what to do and how to handle an animal crisis, and saving the lives of as many furry family members as I can.

My name is Denver and I am a second-career student, currently starting my 3rd year as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine candidate at the University of Minnesota. My first career was unfulfilling and I decided to start college near 30 years of age. Through navigation of many trials that life tends to throw, I kept volunteering at various animal facilities. I started at a wildlife refuge in Florida where I focused primarily on feeding baby birds and helping them learn to fly. While in my Master's program, I moved states and volunteered at a kitten rescue where I cared for neonate kittens who were ill and/or too young to care for themselves. Some of my favorite memories are having taught numerous kittens 'how to be a cat'. It was so much fun teaching them how to chase toys, leap to and fro on cat towers and occasionally taught a few to ‘fetch’ and ‘shake’ hands. Most recently while in my DVM program, I have been volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation center that focuses on helping wild animals get back into the wild after sustaining injuries and/or abandonment. I have had many amazing experiences there such as teaching baby squirrels how to search for food, foxes how to dig holes or helping geese learn how to be wary of humans, a difficult task if they've imprinted on their caretaker! In wildlife rehabilitation, supplies are limited and one has to be very creative in helping the critters thrive daily while being able to keep them wild. Additionally, I am also involved in the sled dog medicine club, where in addition to health checks of racing dogs, orthopedics and the animal version of occupational therapy are heavily intertwined. Who knew I would be helping mushers keep their dogs in top shape during summer months with materials found around the home and kennel?! It wasn't until I had to rehabilitate my own dog after a limb amputation, that I realized that I have been enjoying what I consider to be the animal version of occupational therapy. My Great Pyrenees, Kösem came up limping suddenly one day and after exams and testing, it was discovered that she was suffering from osteosarcoma, a very aggressive bone cancer. As an older dog and with disease progression, it was decided that she would fare best with removal of her front leg. As a 130# dog, my physical ability to assist her was limited. I had to find creative ways to help lift her to stand, walk, go to the bathroom and navigate a couple of steps. After a couple of months of rehab, we were able to go on short walks and nearly 2 years later, shortly before her death, she was still trying to chase the squirrels in the yard! While there are many career paths to take in veterinary medicine, I have discovered through my various and broad experiences that I have a knack for how best to help my patients rehabilitate and incorporate health and exercise into their daily lives and that of their owners (those that have them) for them to live their best lives. Based on these experiences, I look forward to a career that, after medicine, will focus on enrichment and activity in order to promote the health and well-being in the daily lives of my patients, whether they be a house cat, a sled dog or a wild animal.

My career will be just beginning to bloom in three years. I will have just graduated and be starting out as a fledgling veterinarian. While I currently work for a corporate small animal clinic, I hope to find a practice that will continue to educate me in exotic/pocket pet medicine. I noticed a severe gap in the availability of veterinarians who are capable of treating such pets as rodents, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians, etc. I actually came across this niche at my current summer internship. The doctor whom I am mentoring under randomly fostered some Guinea Pigs during her third year of schooling and apparently had a difficult time finding a veterinarian who specialized in pocket pets. This set her up to search for her own knowledge, which has spread to her career. She mainly sees companion animals, but will see pocket pets too. This unexpected exposure has made me decide to change my trajectory and pursue exotic/pocket pet medicine instead of traditional small animal. I look forward to learning as much as I can in school to prepare for my upcoming career. In my late twenties, I was the proud owner of the World's Dumbest Weimaraner. His name was Loki. But not after the Marvel Comic character, the original myth, where Loki always seems to get himself in trouble and it's never really his fault. While I have a plethora of funny and amusing stories,which I call the Misadventures of Loki, this is one of my favorites. He and I had just moved to Florida from Colorado and were exploring the nearby dog beach for the maybe the second or third time. (One of the other stories was teaching Loki how to swim and him nearly drowning us the first time we went to the beach). On this particular visit, the tide was low and calm, and Loki was having a great time chasing the terns and gulls back and forth along the waters edge. As he was galumphing through the shallow waters, he spotted a flock of pelicans serenely floating about one hundred feet from the waters edge. He took off, headed straight for them! I was only mildly concerned as I knew he would stop when the water got deep enough that his feet couldn't touch the bottom and he would be forced to swim, giving the pelicans plenty of time to fly away. However, this was not to be the case. That low, calm tide made the water shallow enough that he JUST KEPT RUNNING. This realization made all of my alarm bells in my head ring. Loki had zero sense of how big pelicans really were! As he neared the closest bird, instead of flying away, it stood up, spread its six foot wing span, let out a horrific squawk and jabbed its very large beak at my dog. Loki let out a yelp of surprise at this sudden 'very large bird' and tried his darnedest to change course to no avail. He barreled directly into that pelican. They tumbled over each other, each in surprise. After both scrambling to right themselves, the pelican flew off and Loki came running back towards me faster than he ran out, terrified. Once he got back to shore, he tried to jump into my arms, knocking me down in the process, as he tried to hide from the 'very scary bird'. I wish the lesson of 'Pelicans = Scary' had stuck, alas it did not. There is another story from that beach day involving a washed-up jellyfish, but that one will have to wait until next time...